I am from Belfast – was at the art school 1970-71 (foundation) then Slade and Hamburg schools and worked with Beuys for 10 years and 30 years with Richard Demarco in Edinburgh . I own and manage Summerhall, Europe’s largest private arts centre. We mount about 150 art shows a year! Plus hundreds of performing arts and other events (over 400,000 visitors)
See http://www.summerhall.co.uk
and http://www.summerhall.tv
Belfast Art School has for decades been one of the very best in UK and in Europe, but it is one of the least well-recognised. Out of it have spawned many formidable artist groups. Belfast artists have had hardly any exposure outside the province.
I would like to do something to rectify this by over a number of years reserving quarterly slots for Northern Irish artists – the groups, and or singly, and or in other wider groupings.
I’d be pleased to come and talk to students and give a formal talk too. I’ve done 1-3 day post-grad visiting artist ‘tutorials’ at Belfast in the past – no fee required.

Hi Robert,
Thanks for your comments. It’s great to hear your connection and observations from Edinburgh. We agree the MFA programme does amazing things and has a long and recent legacy to be very proud of. As you know we also have links to Bueys and Demarco too! We’re not so sure that Belfast artist have hardly any exposure outside of the province – we could name many many artists with significant profiles (Turner prize winners, nominees, Nissan Award recipients, Paul Hamlyn etc etc). Also it’s interesting to look at art schools around Ireland and beyond and see the amount of tutors who started their art careers via the MFA Belfast. I guess though it’s hard to classify a ‘Belfast’ or ‘Northern Irish’ artist – we tend to claim anyone who has come through the MFA in Belfast as having a valid Belfast association! Many, like myself, came here as a student from elsewhere but would certainly be more associated with Belfast than any other scene – but I would certainly claim to possess a profile which extends beyond Belfast / Northern Ireland. We certainly however agree that there is a need for emerging artists here to break out beyond in order to establish and sustain an international a practice whilst basing themselves here. So it’s great in that sense to hear your thoughts on developing opportunities for Belfast / NI artists. We be very happy to develop that conversation – perhaps email is the best way to proceed. Summerhill looks an exciting entity. Yours with best wishes, Dan and Mary, MFA Belfast.

No wish to suggest Belfast artists and art school teachers have not had exposure outside the province – e.g. John Kindness to name but one of many – my point is that recognition of the strength of art practise – the whole picture and of groups not just individuals has not percolated into the current mindsets of London, New York etc. I brought Beuys to Belfast and a lot of N.irish artists to Dokumenta 6 and to London – but that was in ’70s – there has been aterrific amount of interesting work since then -but where is the big show or big book that extols all of that fully?

Thanks again for your comments and support Robert,
The 70’s certainly were a fertile time in Belfast and one that still resonates here now.

There have been several significant exposures over the decades since then. A skimming survey would include: in the mid 90’s (cease fire days) we had a massive wave of interest from international curators chasing ‘conflict art’ and finding something else of more interest. From that many Belfast artists became further internationalised (Suzan Philipsz, Phil Collins, Colin Darke, Seamus Harahan, Sandra Johnson to name a couple). Then in the 2000’s the Northern Irish Pavilion at Venice was established – this ran for 6 years and then unfortunately fell foul of the economic crisis – A whole cohort of young artists featured in the first of these “The Nature of Things”and have since maintained international profile. Then there were the solo presentations of Willie Doherty (not that he needs more internationalisation!) and Susan MacWilliams. The Golden Thread Gallery Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art publication and exhibition series over the last 15 years – spanning pre war to today (published roughly every 2 years – each curated from different perspectives and generations) – this is very interesting but I would suggest its distribution reach is not as expansive as we’d and they’d like it to be. Then groups such as Bbeyond (inc. Alastair MacLennan), Catalyst Arts, Factotum and others all operate in ways which have decent international profiles. Also many NI artist featuring in Biennials and such like around the world including Manifesta, Documenta, Sao Paulo, Venice, Melbourne, Sydney, Riga, Prague, Berlin, Istanbul (off the top of my head). Thinking Long – Contemporary Art in Northern Ireland, by Liam Kelly was published in 1996….

But I still agree there is a ceiling for many emerging artists which is tough to break through beyond the thriving artist run scene in Belfast – and we always encourage support structures to enable that – and there are several ongoing good initiatives, international exchanges, international curator study tours, outbound touring international exhibitions, visiting artists/curators etc.. One of the big difficulties in Northern Ireland is in finding funding for publications – it’s something that hasn’t been able to happen enough here – we’ve missed a properly funded international art gallery (now we have the MAC we hope things will change a little) that could fund publications on a regular basis. We’re certainly missing a ‘Thinking Long’ style publication of the period post 1996.

But yes!!! we would be interested to hear more about Summerhall and extending our networks to support artists based in Northern Ireland.

The term “conflict art” leaves me worse than cold of course. When I created the Troubled Image Group in ’71 with maybe 30 artists including lot of teachers at the art college we knew that sensational imagery of violence was too easy and playing the media game. The works had to be far more complex to embrace the surreal context and about people and to counter the narrow-focus of media attention, the focus only on violence, which is like staring into a black hole.
Paintings and drawings by children encompass the obvious best of all. A lot of artists, however, focused on the iconic images of ‘the troubles’ as per the media’s obsessions and consequently found themselves dialoguing with stuff that had nothing to say profoundly back – merely art translations of news pictures. My interest is in what shows profundity and helps to place the troubles fully in psycho-social context. I like works that include subjective creative reworking between artists and their work i.e. not simply cool conceptual statements playing games with words – rather whatever can move us to laugh and cry at same time – definitely not to patronise the idea of art + troubles. As mostly everyone in N.Ireland knows the violence was mischance and farce as well as appalling general and personal tragedies with untold effects, and also acutely surreal in a dada cubist expressionist poetic language. Big truth is most often found in paradox and irony. My most revered painter of the period is Denis McBride. John Kindness of course did the ironic humour best of all. A close pals of mine include Rainer Pagel, also Alistair McLennon. Then too, Joseph McWilliams and David Crone and others when at their most subtle and quite abstract – not interested in the murals or painterly treatments of bombs and bullets – and interested very much in all the younger artists who have felt obliged to treat unpalatable subject matter and try to do so as great art including performances and installations but not just to testify to their own bleeding heart sensitivities. Do you get the criteria I’m suggesting here?